How To Solve Today’s NYT Pips, Wednesday, September 2

How To Play Pips

In Pips, you have a grid of multi=-colored boxes. Each colored area represents a different “condition” that you have to achieve. You have a select number of dominoes that you have to spend filling in the grid. You must use every domino and achieve every condition properly to win. There are Easy, Medium and Difficult tiers.

Here’s an example of a difficult tier Pips:

As you can see, the grid has a bunch of symbols and numbers with each color. On the far left, the three purple squares must not equal one another (hence the equal sign crossed out). The two pink squares next to that must equal a total of 0. The zig-zagging blue squares all must equal one another. You click on dominoes to rotate them, and will need to since they have to be rotated to fit where they belong.

Not shown on this grid are other conditions, such as “less than” or “greater than.” If there are multiple tiles with > or < signs, the total of those tiles must be greater or less than the listed number. It varies by grid. Blank spaces can have anything. The various possible conditions are:

• = All pips must equal one another in this group.
• ≠ All pips must not equal one another in this group.
• > The pip in this tile (or tiles) must be greater than the listed number.
• < The pip in this tile must be less than the listed number.
• An exact number (like 6) The pip must equal this exact number.
• Tiles with no conditions can be anything.

In order to win, you have to use up all your dominoes by filling in all the squares, making sure to fit each condition. Sometimes there’s only one way to solve the puzzle. Other times, there can be two or more different solutions. Play today’s Pips puzzle here.

Today’s Pips Solutions And Walkthrough

Below are the solutions for the Easy and Medium tier Pips. After that, I’ll walk you through the Hard puzzle. Spoilers ahead.

Today’s Easy Pips

Today’s Medium Pips

Hard Pips Walkthrough And Solution

Here’s today’s Hard Pips:

Lots of equals groups today including the big 6-tile Orange Equals and a block of four Dark Blue = tiles. The real clue, however, is once again the 6’s. I’m always looking for two-tile 12 groups lately, because it’s the only pair in the game that can only be two of the same pips other than a 0 group, and a pair that equals 1 can still have the 0 or the 1 in either position. It’s a place to start, in any case, and in today’s puzzle we have two 12 pairs and just four 6’s, so we’ll start there. We also know that no 6 can touch the big Orange = group, so we need to be careful about which = groups we combine each 6 with. The pips we have the most of that also has a double are 4’s, so we’ll save them for Orange =.

Step 1

Place the 6/5 from Pink 12 down into Dark Blue = and the 6/2 from Orange 12 into Purple =. The 2/2 goes above that in the remaining Purple = tiles and the 5/5 goes in the Dark Blue tiles next to that. Finally, place the 5/0 domino from Dark Blue = into Pink < 3.

Step 2

Place the 6/4 domino from Pink 12 down into Green > 3 and the 2/4 domino from Blue < 3 into Orange =. The 5/4 domino goes from Purple > 3 into Orange = and the 6/1 domino goes from Orange 12 into the first free tile.

Solution

Place the 4/4 domino in the top right of Orange = and the 1/4 domino from Blue 1 into Orange =. The 4/3 domino goes from Orange = into Green = and the 3/5 domino goes from Green = into Dark Blue 8. Wrap this up with the 3/1 domino from Dark Blue 8 into the second free tile.

Have a weird Wednesday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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